Articles

Daily articles carefully curated by the All About Jazz staff. Read our popular and future articles.

BOOK REVIEW November 24, 2020

What, and Give Up Showbiz?

What, and Give Up Showbiz: Six Decades in the Music Business Fred Taylor (with Richard Vacca) 276 Pages 978-1493051847 Backbeat Books 2020 In his recently released biography What, and Give Up Showbiz?: Six Decades in the Music Business, jny: Boston's late legendary and iconic music impresario Fred Taylor reveals six decades of promoting, booking, and personal friendships with an “A" list of musicians. With an ear for talent, endless energy, and a ...

ALBUM REVIEW November 24, 2020

Keith Jarrett: Budapest Concert

By Mike Jurkovic

Burdened as it is by the news that, due to two strokes suffered in 2018, Keith Jarrett's glorious art of live composition is all but over, Budapest Concert has some serious heavy lifting to do. Triumphant and transcendent, it rises to the grand occasion and leaves the listener marveling at how any artist, of any age, of any discipline, can still capture the moment and the imagination so singularly as Jarrett does sixty years down the line. Recorded ...

RADIO November 24, 2020

A Night at the Jazz Circus! - Companion Mixtape

By Ludovico Granvassu

From Charles Gayle's alter ego, Streets the Clown, to the music performed by the Kamikaze Ground Crew for the Flying Karamazov Brothers, from the countless jazz renditions of the iconi themes that Nino Rota wrote for Federico Fellini's movies to the equally countless jazz tunes inspired by circus acts... Jazz and Circus have a long history of cross-pollination. This mixtape is a fun-filled companion to the two parts of our show “A Night at the Jazz Circus!" [click ...

ALBUM REVIEW November 24, 2020

Fahir Atakoglu: For Love

By Edward Blanco

Veteran international recording artist Fahir Atakoglu delivers his eighteenth album as leader with the audacious For Love, an album which he proclaims: “ ... Is all about love." And he believes “Everything depends on love." A native of Turkey, this Turkish-American artist is an award-winning composer and pianist whose long and distinguished career has included writing for television, films and documentaries. This exceptional recording was purposely designed with a foreign flavor in mind, revealing a varied repertoire that blends musical ...

RADIO November 24, 2020

Little Big Bands

By Russell Perry

Between the standard small jazz ensembles of quartets, quintets and sextets and the powerhouse big bands is a world of ensembles with eight, nine, ten or eleven players. Famously, The 1949 Birth of the Cool sessions were from a nonet assembled by Miles Davis, with arrangements by Gerry Mulligan, Gil Evans and John Lewis. Bands of this size are a nimble playground for creative arrangers. Little Big Bands in this hour of Jazz at 100 Today! Playlist Host ...

ALBUM REVIEW November 24, 2020

BK3: Think About It!

By Bruce Lindsay

BK3 is the collective name for a trio of Scotland's finest jazz players—pianist Brian Kellock, bassist Kenny Ellis and drummer John Rae. The three musicians first came together as the rhythm section for the John Rae Collective in 1988 and in the 30 or so years prior to the 2020 release of Think About It! the trio has released just two albums. The trio recorded Think About It! at Sound Café in Penicuik, south of Edinburgh, but exactly ...

ALBUM REVIEW November 24, 2020

Douglas Lee: Themes For Falling Down Stairs

By Skip Heller

There is an alternate universe someplace where the earthshaking jazz event of 1959 is neither Miles Davis' Kind of Blue nor John Coltrane's Giant Steps (Atlantic Records), but is instead the release of Henry Mancini's The Music From Peter Gunn (RCA Victor). Douglas Lee is probably getting his mail there right now. Lee's Themes For Falling Down Stairs arrives, sent by his publicist Josh Mills, whose client roster has long been one of the more interesting here in ...